Dr. Carolyn Kay Brancato

Dr. Carolyn Kay Brancato has more than 30 years experience in various aspects of corporate governance, corporate finance and regulatory economics. Her work is globally recognized in such fields as: tracking the growth of global institutional investors; how equity market short-termism is discouraging long-term investments; how risk management must be integrated into corporate strategy and sustainability, and how boards of directors can provide more effective oversight working with management to increase corporate value.

She is the Director of The Conference Board Governance Academy as well as Director of the Corporate Governance Council in Europe. She was formerly Director of The Conference Board’s South Asia Council on Corporate Governance & Risk Management based in India. In 1993 she founded The Conference Board’s Global Corporate Governance Research Center in New York City and, in 2004, The Directors’ Institute at The Conference Board. Following the Enron and WorldCom debacles, she was Director of The Conference Board’s globally recognized Commission on Public Trust and Private Enterprise, Chaired by Pete Peterson and former Treasury Secretary John Snow (Commission members included Paul Volker and Andy Grove.)

Dr. Brancato has conducted more than fifty in-house customized director education and board effectiveness programs for companies as diverse as Weyerhauser, H.J. Heinz, Saudi Aramco, The Kuwait Petroleum Company, Reliance (India), The State Owned Enterprises Bureau (SASAC) in China, Temasek (Singapore), The World Bank and The Asian Development Bank.

She has written two major books on corporate governance: Institutional Investors and Corporate Governance: Creating Long-Term Corporate Value and Getting Listed on Wall Street, both published by Business One Irwin. She recently finished a Conference Board report on Board Evaluations in the UK and Selected European Countries. Her other writings include: The Conference Board’s Handbook on Corporate Governance; The Role of the Board in Enterprise Risk Management; and Corporate Governance Developments in India, Hong Kong and Singapore.

Prior to joining The Conference Board in 1993, she was a securities analyst for a Wall Street brokerage house, Chief Economist for the New York City Environmental Protection Administration, Director of the Energy and Industry Analysis and Finance Divisions of the Congressional Research Service at the Library of Congress (the in-house research arm of the United States Congress) and Chief Economist for a major international law firm. In 1992 she was the Staff Director of the US Government’s major study on global competitiveness conducted by the U.S. Competitiveness Policy Council (members appointed by the President, the Senate and the House of Representatives).

Dr. Brancato is a Fellow of the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures & Commerce which is centered in London. She earned her B.A. in Economics from Barnard College (Columbia University) and her Ph.D. in regulatory economics and public finance from New York University. Her 1974 Ph.D. dissertation was on the changing economics of the electric utility industry brought on by the advent of nuclear energy. She has been named by Directorship Magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in corporate governance. Dr. Brancato and her husband have been avid offshore sailors and now reside in the Berkshires, Massachusetts.